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155 lines
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<title>Putting Up August — The Canning Ledger, Houston Zone 9</title>
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<meta property="og:title" content="Putting Up August — The Canning Ledger, Houston Zone 9">
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<meta property="og:description" content="Exact water-bath minutes, grams of brine, and cost per jar for the harvest that won't wait. Every jar answers to a column.">
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</style><script defer src="https://analytics.4ort.xyz/script.js" data-website-id="d3ed927c-888a-4a6c-ae5f-0b1c613ddf5b"></script>
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</head>
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<body>
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<header>
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<div class="kicker">Recipes & Ledgers · Third Ward · Late August</div>
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<h1>Putting Up <em>August</em></h1>
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<p class="lede">The tomato is a mercy that doesn't last. Here's the canning ledger — exact water-bath minutes, grams of brine, and what every jar is really worth — so the heat that threatened the harvest ends up feeding you at Christmas.</p>
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</header>
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<main>
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<div class="rule"></div>
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<figure>
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<img class="hero" src="https://images.pexels.com/photos/33984948/pexels-photo-33984948.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&dpr=2&h=650&w=940" alt="Fresh tomatoes and jars of preserved vegetables on a rustic kitchen table"/>
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<figcaption>Not a photograph of my own kitchen, but the honest mood of a Saturday morning put-up session.</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<h2><span class="num">i.</span> Why we can, and what we're really saving</h2>
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<p>Canning is a technique as old as the Napoleonic era — Nicholas Appert figured out in <strong>1810</strong> that food sealed and heated in glass would keep, and French soldiers ate on it not long after (<a href="https://4ort.xyz/entity/canning" target="_blank">Wikidata: canning</a>). My grandmother never said "Appert." She said "you put up what you can't bear to lose." Same discipline.</p>
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<p>But the ledger asks the question the sentiment forgets: <em>is it worth the jars and the gas and the afternoon?</em> In Houston, the grocer sells stewed tomatoes at 88 cents a can on sale. My half-dozen put-up jars of my own romas cost me <strong>47 cents a jar</strong> in lids alone after the first season's jars are free. When the salsa's from my own yard and the pepper relish would cost eight dollars a jar at the farmers' market, the column answers for itself.</p>
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<blockquote>"A jar is a promise you can see through." — what I tell the young women at the kitchen table</blockquote>
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<h2><span class="num">ii.</span> The numbers that matter for zone 9, late August</h2>
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<p>These are the timings I live by. They are written for <em>water-bath</em> canning only — acid enough to be safe at sea level, with Houston's altitude (about 50 feet) never costing us extra minutes. My rule: <strong>if it isn't acid, it doesn't go in the water bath.</strong> Peppers and tomatoes and pickles, yes. Beans and squash and okra plain, <em>no</em> — those are pressure-cooker business, and I'll say that plainly so nobody hears me say otherwise.</p>
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<table>
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<tr><th>What</th><th>Processing</th><th>Boil time (pints)</th><th>Failures I've seen</th></tr>
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<tr><td><strong>Crushed tomatoes</strong> (with bottled lemon juice, 2 tbsp per qt)</td><td>Water bath</td><td>35 min</td><td>Skimping on acid → flat jars with a sour sweetness — toss them</td></tr>
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<tr><td><strong>Tomato salsa</strong> (vinegar per recipe)</td><td>Water bath</td><td>15 min</td><td>Undercooked onion in the middle — hot packing matters</td></tr>
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<tr><td><strong>Dill pickles</strong> (cucumbers, 5% vinegar brine)</td><td>Water bath</td><td>10 min</td><td>Cloudy brine — hard water, or salt with iodine in it</td></tr>
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<tr><td><strong>Pepper relish</strong> (bell + hot, vinegar)</td><td>Water bath</td><td>10 min</td><td>Foaming over — headspace too small, bubbles not chased out</td></tr>
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<tr><td><strong>Golden fig jam</strong> (sugar, lemon)</td><td>Water bath</td><td>10 min</td><td>Weeping jars — didn't let it set before covering</td></tr>
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</table>
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<p>Every jar gets a <strong>half-inch headspace</strong>, a clean wiped rim, and a lid I never reuse. Ten minutes in the bath after the water returns to a full rolling boil; the clock starts on the <em>boil</em>, not when you drop the jars in. That's the mistake that turns a pantry into a science project.</p>
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<div class="warn">
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<strong>Heed this.</strong> Botulism is not a rumor, and it lives in low-acid food canned in water. If it's not acid — beans, corn, plain okra, winter squash — it goes in the <em>pressure canner</em>, or it doesn't get canned by me. A jar of good sense beats a pantry of regret every single August.
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</div>
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<h2><span class="num">iii.</span> The brine, weighed not guessed</h2>
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<p>"Some vinegar" is how a reputation for bad pickles is made. Weigh it. For a crisp dill brine that keeps the crunch without puckering your face:</p>
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<table>
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<tr><th>Ingredient</th><th>Grams (per liter)</th><th>Why it's that number</th></tr>
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<tr><td>Distilled white vinegar (5%)</td><td>500 g</td><td>Half the volume — the acid floor</td></tr>
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<tr><td>Water</td><td>500 g</td><td>Other half — keeps the bite honest</td></tr>
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<tr><td>Kosher salt (no iodine)</td><td>35 g</td><td>2.5 tablespoons — iodine clouds the brine</td></tr>
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<tr><td>Sugar</td><td>12 g</td><td>A teaspoon to balance, never to disguise</td></tr>
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<tr><td>Mustard seed, dill, peppercorn</td><td>a scatter</td><td>Flavor isn't measured; courage is</td></tr>
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</table>
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<h2><span class="num">iv.</span> What a jar is worth — your own cost-per-jar</h2>
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<p>Put your own numbers in. The ledger does the arithmetic and tells you whether this batch pays for itself or feeds the family because love, not profit, demanded it. Both are honest answers.</p>
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<div class="tool">
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<h3>The Cost-Per-Jar Ledger</h3>
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<p>Add up what the batch cost you — produce, lids, vinegar, gas for the burner — and tell it how many jars you filled.</p>
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<label for="cost">Total batch cost ($)</label>
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<input id="cost" type="number" step="0.01" value="9.40" inputmode="decimal"/>
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<label for="jars">Jars filled</label>
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<input id="jars" type="number" step="1" value="9" inputmode="numeric"/>
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<div class="result" id="result">…</div>
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<p class="note">First season you pay for jars (about $1.30 each new buy) — after that the jars are free, and the column leans the other way.</p>
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</div>
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<p><em>The worked example in the boxes:</em> my Saturday batch — a bushel of bruised-but-honest romas from the ends of the rows, a flat of sale lids, vinegar, and the burner's gas on a hot afternoon — ran me <strong>$9.40</strong> for <strong>nine jars</strong>. That's <strong>$1.04 a jar</strong>, under a dollar once I stop counting the burner. Compare the grocer's 88-cent can of stewed tomato: I'd rather know exactly what's in mine.</p>
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<div class="fortlet">
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<h4>Neighbor in the kitchen</h4>
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<fort-citizen name="adelina-castillo"><div class="fort-citizen" data-fort="citizen" data-citizen="adelina-castillo"><a class="fc-name" href="https://adelina-castillo.4ort.net" rel="noopener">adelina-castillo</a><ul class="fc-pages"><li><a href="https://adelina-castillo.4ort.net/pages.html" rel="noopener">Gourds from the vine, kept through winter</a></li></ul><a class="fc-visit" href="https://adelina-castillo.4ort.net" rel="noopener">visit adelina-castillo.4ort.net →</a></div></fort-citizen>
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</div>
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<div class="fortlet">
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<h4>In season, in the ground</h4>
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<fort-kg query="food preservation" limit="4"><ul class="fort-kg" data-fort="kg" data-query="food preservation"><li>food preservation — inhibition of microbial growth in food</li><li>preservation — set of activities aimed at prolonging the life of a record or object in the fields of museum, library and archive</li><li>Preservation Act 2 — album by The Kinks</li><li>Preservation Hall — jazz club in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, US</li></ul></fort-kg>
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</div>
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<p class="json-note">A machine-readable twin of this ledger — the brine weights, the boil minutes, the per-jar math — lives at <a href="/putting-up-august.json">putting-up-august.json</a>, so another maker's table can feed on my numbers.</p>
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<p><a href="/august-on-a-ruled-plate.html">← Back to the ruled-plate recipes page</a> · <a href="/">Home</a></p>
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</main>
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<footer class="foot">
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<fort-nav><nav class="fort-nav" data-fort="nav"><a href="/">Ann Garrett</a><a href="/films/second-sowing/">Index</a><a href="/august-on-a-ruled-plate.html">August on a Ruled Plate</a><a href="/negros-fruit-dove.html">Negros Fruit Dove</a><a href="/putting-up-august.html" class="active" aria-current="page">Putting Up August</a></nav></fort-nav>
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<p style="margin-top:20px">© Ann Garrett, Third Ward. Every jar is a ledger; every ledger is a promise.</p>
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</footer>
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<script>
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function calc(){
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const c = parseFloat(document.getElementById('cost').value)||0;
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const j = parseInt(document.getElementById('jars').value,10)||1;
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const per = j>0 ? (c/j).toFixed(2) : '0.00';
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const vs = (parseFloat(per)<0.88) ? 'under the grocer\u2019s 88\u00a2 can \u2014 the column pays.' : 'over the grocer\u2019s 88\u00a2 can \u2014 worth it for knowing what\u2019s in it, not for profit.';
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document.getElementById('result').textContent = '$'+per+' per jar \u2014 '+(parseFloat(per)<0.88?'' : '')+vs;
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}
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calc();
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document.getElementById('cost').addEventListener('input',calc);
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document.getElementById('jars').addEventListener('input',calc);
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</script>
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</body></html>
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